THE OPEN WOOD FIRE. 53 



before his cheerful wood fire. My mind goes back 

 also to a few glimpses that I was privileged to take 

 of the study of the president of a great university, 

 where a wood fire burned on the hearth, beside the 

 books; and, again, to a brief midnight visit to the 

 spacious and magnificent library of another and most 

 profound scholar, world-renowned indeed for his eru- 

 dition, who rejoiced, apparently, even in his theology, 

 in the inspiration of his lovely wood fire and in the 

 comfort of having his easy-chair drawn close to it. 

 (The hired man gave me the opportunity, with a lan- 

 tern to guide us; and a weird, almost mystical, feeling 

 it was that came upon me to be there, in the dimness, 

 among the interminable tomes of the great dead.) 

 But, of all my college memories, the one that I cherish 

 perhaps most, or at least equally with any of the others, 

 is the thought of a delightful evening which I spent 

 in the fellowship of a great philosopher, when, as we 

 talked together through the hours before the logs and 

 watched the glowing coals die away into the midnight 

 embers, he spoke to me of God, and of the reality of 

 truth, and of the exceeding beauty of life. 



No one who has ever stood before the old-time, 

 spacious fireplace at Mount Vernon, with its crane and 

 trammels and all the cooking utensils, can have failed 

 to feel a thrill in the experience. Why, here Wash- 

 ington lived! And this is the kind of fire he had! 

 And so with all the other colonial mansions, when the 

 forests were plenty old andirons, old bellows, old 

 tongs, old inglenooks. What an atmosphere of old- 

 time ways and old-time living the very heart of the 

 republic, even now, to my thinking! 



